Some Thoughts on Television History and Historiography: A British Perspective

Abstract

‘suffered from a lack of historical studies’ responding instinctively to ‘a frantically contemporary agenda.’ He compared this situation unfavourably with both British film studies and the study of television in the United States, noting that there is little that engages with ‘historical scholarship on programme culture.’ This was certainly accurate when it was written, but the picture is somewhat different now, particularly where the history of television drama is concerned, and, six-years on, we are seeing the kind of scholarship whose absence Corner lamented. The result is that the history – or, rather histories, since there is more than one in play – of television drama are coming into view in a new way, at a time when the technologies of dissemination and the conditions of television viewing are changing in profound ways. The following is indicative rather than comprehensive, but it is worth surveying some of the work that has been done. To begin at (or near) the beginning: early television drama has been thoroughly documented by Jason Jacobs, who demonstrated that drama from the era of live television had an aesthetic of its own and was not simply stage drama shoehorned into the studio. John Caughie, too, has revisited both the history of early television and the moment of the 1960s, the era of the BBC’s ‘Wednesday Play,’ in its cultural and historical contexts. There have also been important era-specific accounts of early television, particularly Janet Thumin’s study of the gendered nature of drama and its audiences in the 1950s, which Corner notes. (The influence of contemporary feminist scholarship on the construction of television histories more generally has been significant, especially in the area of popular drama and its audiences [see Charlotte Brunsdon]). The study of historical television drama has also begun to draw on the perspectives of practitioners and professionals. The collection edited by Jonathan Bignell, Madeline Macmurraugh-Kavanagh and myself contains essays dealing primarily (though not exclusively) with the 1960s and 1970s, and includes accounts by directors, writers and producers. This period, which is generally seen as crucial to the Some Thoughts on Television History and Historiography: A British Perspective